Many self-quantification enthusiasts, athletes, and biohackers report spending enough hours in bed each night, but upon review of their sleep cycles, find that an “8 hour sleep night” really only translates to a relatively disappointing 6, 6.5 or 7 hours of actual sleep. If you fall into this category, then keep reading, because I’ll dive into some of my top tips for reducing nighttime disturbances and restless sleep. 

What Causes Restless Sleep?

Restless sleep and sleep disturbances can be caused by a variety of factors, including stress, excess noise, restless or loud partners, pets, babies or and food timing. To reduce restlessness and to get more restful sleep, consider tips such as:

-Optimizing your sleep environment by ensuring your room is completely blacked out in darkness.

-Keep your bedroom is cool (I recommend 64-65 °F as the ideal sleep temperature).

-Avoid spicy food and heavy meals or high amounts of alcohol (more than two drinks) within 2 hours of bedtime, and avoid caffeinated beverages or energy supplements in the afternoon and evening.

-Complete any hard exercise sessions at least 3 hours prior to bedtime, and if you must workout closer to bedtime than that, lower your body’s core temperature with a post-workout cold shower (more details below)

-Install Iris on all your computers and switch it to sleep mode (or use this red light iPhone trick) our phone to night mode when the sun sets in whatever area of the world you happen to be in. 

When it comes to restfulness, in my experience the biggest variable above to make the most significant impact is to keep your body temperature low. Not only should you keep the room relatively cool, but you should also consider:

-An outdoor walk in the cold, a quick cold shower, or jump into a pool, lake, river or ocean if you’ve done a hard workout that night or eaten a very heavy meal. Some athletes are concerned a post-workout cold soak will blunt the hormetic response to exercise and limit muscle or mitochondrial gains, but this is only the case if you get very cold (such as a 10-minute ice bath). A 2-5 minute cold shower or cold soak or 10 minute outdoors cold walk will not impair exercise response.

-Wearing wool socks to bed. Research suggests that wearing wool socks to bed causes blood vessel dilation (vasodilation) that can warm the skin but lower the body’s overall core temperature, and can shorten the time it takes to fall asleep by over 15 minutes!

-Use breathable or cooling bed sheets. The best choice for cool, breathable sheets is linen, which tends to be cooler than cotton. For a more eco-friendly or hypoallergenic choice, bamboo is an excellent choice. It is hypoallergenic, and also feels gentle to the touch. If you must use cotton, look for a thread count lower than 400, which is thinner and cooler than higher thread count sheets.

Aside from thermoregulation and cooling the body, a few of my other favorite quick tips for reducing restlessness include:

-Plenty of morning sunlight and natural light exposure, which can jumpstart the circadian rhythm and allow for deeper sleep later at night. 

-Use of apps that enhance sleep, particularly when used with a “pink noise” setting. One of my favorites is Sleepstream, and another excellent app for sleep is Brain.fm. I recommend putting your phone in airplane mode and playing these apps next to your bed at night, or if in a particularly noisy area, using foam earplugs and/or a sleep-friendly set of headphones, such as the soft, side-sleeper friendly Sleepphones.

-Installing blackout curtains in the bedroom, turning off all light-producing devices or covering the lights with LED light-blocking tape, and donning red or orange blue-light blocking glasses whenever the sun sets in whatever area of the world you happen to be in. 

-Ensure your bedroom is a “safe place”, which your body primarily associates with sleep or sex only. Avoid taking your laptop into bed to work, or reading business books or other highly stimulating intellectual material prior to bed. Keep the TV out of the bedroom, or don’t watch TV in bed, even during the day. For the ultimate in feeling safe during sleep, consider the use of a gravity blanket, which can assist with activating your parasympathetic nervous system during sleep. 

-Don’t eat a heavy meal prior to bed, but if you do find yourself frequently waking, consider consuming a cocktail that will allow a slow “bleed” of calories and nutrients into your system during a night of sleep. I prefer a tablespoonful or two of coconut oil and almond butter drizzled with raw honey and a pinch of sea salt. The addition of collagen or glycine may also be helpful.

-Finally, any inhibitory neurotransmitter supplement, including GABA, passionflower, valerian root or chamomile, or a small dose of melatonin prior to bed.

Restless Sleep Summary

Cold, darkness, and silence are the holy grail of a good night of sleep. When you use the practical tips in this article to achieve each of these three keys, and simultaneously address exercise and eating patterns before bed, you’ll experience far fewer nighttime wakings and better daytime energy.

How about you? Have you found any particularly effective strategies for nighttime wakings and restlessness? Leave your tips below!

The post Restless Sleep: How to Stop Tossing and Turning appeared first on Onnit Academy.

But when it comes to workouts and workout modalities that fly under the radar, I’ve been obsessed lately with three different forms of workouts – workouts that some people might call “woo woo” but that really do get me a lot of bang for my fitness buck.

In no particular order of importance here they are…

Workout #1. Kundalini Yoga

At the risk of any yogi that is reading this article being forced to absolutely cringe, I would roughly define kundalini yoga as a form of yoga that involves intense breath work, plenty of quick muscular contracts, meditation with your eyes closed, and an intense, tantric-like focus on moving energy up and down your spine.

I’m now using it for everything from recharging my body at the beginning or at the end of the day, stepping into airport bathrooms and closing the door to do quick 5 to 10 minute routines, and doing full-blown 30-90 minute routines in a hot sauna.

I really dig this form of yoga because it opens up the lungs, earns a bunch of calories, gets a bunch of blood flowing, and frankly, makes you feel like a million bucks when you finish. Here’s a link to a podcast that I recorded that goes into the nitty-gritty details…

But ultimately, if you haven’t yet tried this form of yoga, you definitely need to add it to your repertoire (and grab an Onnit multi-mat to make your practice oh-so-comfortable).

Workout #2. Neuro-Sets

I recently finished reading a book called “Neuro-Mass”. The relatively simple routine outlined in the book has absolutely blown my mind and pushed my fitness to new levels.

The program basically goes something like this: you start with what is called an “grind”, which is a super slow, controlled set performed with either body weight or a kettle bell.

For example, if you are doing a Neuromass for your legs, you might do a super slow lunge with one leg forward and the back leg elevated on step, for 5-10 repetitions.

Next, you move into some kind of a power, explosive movement. For example, using the leg training analogy I just described, you would do scissor jumps (AKA lunge jumps) for 15-60 seconds.

Then you would finish with an isometric hold that builds up a ton of lactic acid and “finishes off” the muscle group.

For this, you could use something like an isometric lunge hold. You complete 3-5 rounds with minimal rest between rounds before moving on to another body section, such as hamstrings, back, shoulders, etc.

You can do these type of workouts with the mighty Onnit kettlebells, dumbbells, body weight, you name it and I’m now – because of how much I’m traveling – doing these routines about three times a week in a hotel room or park.

The workouts are somewhat unconventional, but I highly recommend if you want a breakthrough in functional fitness.

Workout #3. Hypoxic Swimming

Okay, let’s start with a disclaimer: anytime you’re holding your breath near water, swimming underwater, exerting yourself in water, or doing anything else that involves exercise and water, you need to be careful.

There is indeed such a thing as shallow water blackout and I talk about it in great detail here.

That being said, if you’re an extremely experienced swimmer and/or have a good swim buddy to swim with, there are some really cool things you can do without necessarily having to just swim laps back and forth in a pool while staring at the black line at the bottom of the water.

For example, one workout that I will do, popularized by surfer Laird Hamilton, is to get into a squat position at the bottom of the pool and then do an explosive jump squat up and out the surface of the pool as high as I can go while clapping my hands above my head.

I’ll do 10 to 15 repetitions of this (if the pool is deep enough, you can do this with light dumbbells), and then move into “eggbeater style” kicking in which I’m keeping my hands above my head and exhausting my legs.

You can also do this type of egg-beater kicking or hand “crawling” back and forth across the pool, holding a weight to your chest or between your legs.

Once catching your breath, you can take a heavy set of dumbbells down to the pool and simply walk back and forth until you are out of breath. Just try three to five rounds of this and you’ll be absolutely blown away by the cardiovascular training result.

If you really find yourself sucking wind, try a bit of chlorella, which can assist with oxygen transport in your bloodstream.

Are each of these workouts a bit unconventional? A bit woo-woo? Fly a bit under the radar? Absolutely.

But if you’re looking for a way to shock your body into a metabolic stimulus or new muscle growth or fat loss response, pulling out some of the lesser-known, less popular workouts can be just the thing to get this done. So woo-woo away, baby.

The post 3 Workouts You’re Not Doing That You Should Be appeared first on Onnit Academy.

Never was.

Growing up, I was originally a fantasy-fiction writing, World of Warcraft dominating geek in my early years, and later in high school and college was a clean-living, well-shaven jock athlete with a substance abuse problem that consisted primarily of copious amounts of creatine, caffeine and canned protein shakes.

Until recently, unless you count smoking a very small number of joints at a few random parties in college, about the closest I’ve come to what might be considered “fringe” substance use has been via occasional use of nootropics and rrbal extracts like packets of concentrated Chinese herbs, smart drugs like piracetam, anirecatam and alpha-GPC combinations. ( See my white powder on a kitchen scale video here) and vaporizing nighttime sleep extracts of melatonin and L-theanine. ( Yet another creepy video here).

Of course, if you’re a regular podcast listener or you read my recent article on the “The Effect Of Weed On Exercise: Is Marijuana A Performance-Enhancing Drug?“, then you already know that subsequent to the legalization of weed in my home state of Washington, I’ve been experimenting with edible tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) for exercise performance, and also experimenting with vaporizing indica-rich strains of marijuana for creativity, relaxation and sleep.

So there: now I’m a bonified druggie. But let’s move on, because in this article, we’re going to delve into a derivative of the cannabis plant family that has some pretty massive payoffs for balancing your endocrine system, relieving anxiety, modulating chronic stress, shutting down inflammation and chronic pain, decreasing blood sugar, decreasing appetite and lowering abdominal obesity.

In other words, you’re going to learn about a form of cannabis without the paranoia inducing effects of regular weed, and all of the benefits.

Weed 101

So let’s say you didn’t grow up in the 60’s, never had stoner parents, have lived a relatively clean life, or simply smoke joints without ever thinking too hard about what’s happening chemically. Here’s a bit of “Weed 101”.  

When people talk about marijuana or use marijuana, they’re usually referring to tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). What’s THC? It’s the part of the hemp plant (AKA the cannabis plant) that induces a euphoric state. Or an annoying, mildly schizophrenic state, depending on your perspective. We can at least say beyond a shadow of a doubt that it makes Family Guy episodes way, way more funny.

And of course, THC is what most recreational weed users are looking for, which is probably why botanists have figured out since the 1960’s how to increase the amount of THC from around 3% to 5% in the 1960s to as much as 28% in our current decade. So yes, it’s true that we’re not smoking the weed our parents smoked, and one draw on a typical joint these days would probably knock your mom on her ass.

As you learned a little about in my article on the effects of THC on exercise performance, THC fits into a site called the C-1 receptor in the cerebral cortex of your brain, and this is what causes you to experience a cerebral high, and if you fill in too many of those C-1 receptors, a very, very long time sitting on your couch.

And then there’s cannabidiol (CBD), pictured right, which is one of at least 85 active cannabinoids identified in cannabis, but is a major part of the cannabis plant, accounting for up to 40% of the plant’s total cannabinoid extract. CBD has long been researched for a much wider scope of medical applications than tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). We’ll get into the most relevant of those medical applications later.

But first more Weed 101 – specifically, how CBD is actually separated from THC. And to understand this, you need to put on your straw hat and for the next 60 seconds become a hemp field farmer.

See, hemp fields are simply fields of cannabis plants that grow under conditions in which the male plants have been allowed to fertilize the female plants. When you separate the male and female plants, the females can’t be pollinated, so they produce lots of THC (in what is known as “resinous THC form”) as a result. But when the female is allowed to get pollinated, she barely produces any THC. In fact, the happily sexed up female produces less than 1% THC.

So to gain a higher production of THC in a field of cannabis plants,  you simply take away the male plants so the females can’t be pollinated, and to lower THC production, you keep the male and female plants together. Plants used for CBD oil or CBD capsules or hemp oil or hemp protein or your hippie neighbor’s tie-dyed hemp headwear meet the international standards of less than 1% THC.

——————————–

The Wonderful World Of CBD Chemistry

Screech.

Back it up!

Why on earth would you want to dump a bunch of CBD into your body with none of the fun, psychoactive properties of THC? Don’t worry, we’ll get to that. There are some very, very good reasons.

But first, it’s important for you to understand what’s going on inside your body when you consume this CBD stuff from those happily mating male and female plants.

You already learned that THC attached mostly to C-1 receptors. On the other hand, most people will tell you that CBD fits into a different receptor, the (…drumroll please…) C-2 receptor, thus magically minimizing the effects from the C-1 receptor and providing all the medical benefits without the psychoactive high from THC.

Sigh. I wish it were that easy.

CBD actually has a very low affinity for both C-1 and C-2 receptors but acts as an indirect antagonist of their agonists. Woo-boy. Head spinning? All this means is the following: all the things that would normally activate the C-1 or the C-2 receptors are turned off or turned down by CBD.

For example, CBD can increase C-1 receptor density so that there’s just too many C-1 receptors for THC to bind to, thus taking the edge off the potential psychoactivity of weed, while still retaining all the opioid-like painkilling effects. In case you are concerned about this, meaning you have to buy more weed or take more hits if you’re using CBD oil, you should also know that CBD can extend the duration of the effects of THC by inhibiting the cytochrome P-450 enzymes that would cause you to more rapidly metabolize THC.

So your plasma concentrations of THC increase when you’re using CBD, resulting in a greater amount of THC available to receptors and increasing the effect of THC in a dose-dependent manner (which means the more CBD you use, the more THC becomes available). But along with this increase, CBD also acts as an antagonist at the cannabinoid receptor called GPR55 in the caudate nucleus and putamen sections of your brain, reducing paranoia-like effects or heart-beat racing from weed.

Yes, I know. Eyes glazing over.

Blah, blah, insert Ben Greenfield geek-speak drone sounds here. Place propellor hat on head. Tuck in shirt and gently put pocket protector in its place.

Wake up!

Here’s what I’m getting at: the magic of CBD is not really based on it’s action on C-1 or C-2 receptors, unless you’re using CBD to specifically elongate the effects of THC or to take any unpleasant psychoactive edge off THC. Which works just fine, by the way.

As a matter of fact, if CBD did indeed attach to C-1 and C-2 receptors, it would have the same addictive potential of THC. But since its mechanism of action is not dependent on receptors associated with addiction, CBD is not addictive or habit-forming in any way. So while the receptor explanation is conveniently simple, it’s not quite accurate.

Instead, CBD acts as an agonist on an entirely different receptor called the 5-HT1A receptor, and this is how CBD actually works as an antidepressant with anti-anxiety and neuroprotective effects. It also serves as what is called an “allosteric modulator” of your opioid receptors, which is how it works to remove pain and reduce the effects of chronic inflammation. Other positive medical effects of CBD (there’s over 60 of them, if you care to read up on them here) are due to increased intracellular calcium release and agonism of another receptor called the PPAR-γ receptor.

So let’s put this into real world context.

As you may know or as you may have forgotten (ha!) short term memory problems are really common with THC. That’s why the extremely funny, laugh-snorting joke you told last night is impossible to remember the next morning. Don’t worry, it probably wasn’t as funny as you thought it was last night. But a 2010 study found that CBD eliminates any memory loss problem from weed. In the study, researchers used plants bred for high CBD and low THC plants, and attributed this attenuation of memory loss to CBD’s role as a C-1 antagonist.

Here’s another interesting fact for you: CBD has really strong antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, due primarily to its effects on your adenosine receptors and cytochrome P-450 and 2C enzymes. When this was first discovered, the US government insisted that cannabis has no medical benefits, but at the same time, they took out patent 6,630,507, which gave them rights to the antioxidant properties of cannabis (which they ironically still claim don’t exist). Incidentally, that patent was not extended to actual oil or capsule extracts of cannabis, so the good ol’ US guvmint missed out on some pretty good business opportunities, if you ask me.

It’s also nearly impossible to overdose on CBD. Kind of like water, dark chocolate, and steamed kale, it has an unusually low level of toxicity. In the last 6,000 years, CBD hasn’t killed anyone via overdose, which is particularly impressive when you compare it to non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as ibuprofen, Advil and Tylenol, which can wreak havoc on your gut lining, liver and kidneys. Or aspirin (salicylic acid) which kills over 1,000 people every year. Or alcohol, which kills over 110,000 people a year. No one’s ever died from CBD.

As a matter of fact, leading up to this article, I’ve used very high amounts of CBD (100+mg) with no ill effect, aside from extreme feelings of relaxation, calm and the impression that if my home caught on fire, I probably wouldn’t care (OK, so maybe that’s an ill effect).

A Very Brief History of CBD

Now of course, you could stop reading here and scroll down to fill yourself in on all the benefits of CBD oil, and the specific conditions for which it can come in handy. But I actually find the history of cannabis quite fascinating, especially given America’s persistent widespread disapproval and/or fear of it’s use. It’s not like this stuff just popped up like Red Bull energy drinks, ecstasy, Lunesta, or Adderall. Instead I’d kinda clump cannabis right in with organic vegetables and essential oils.

About 2,700 years ago, in Persia, a spiritual teacher named Zoroaster penned a sacred text of about 10,000 plants. As you can read about in this more incredibly detailed history of cannabis, Zoroaster interestingly included hemp at the tippy-top of his compendium. Hippocrates, the father of western medicine, also recommended cannabis extracts.

Later, Queen Victoria’s physician and one of the world’s leading doctors of that era, Sir Russell Reynolds, prescribed medicinal cannabis for the Queen’s menstrual cramps, for which CBD still works fantastically. When writing about medical marijuana in the first edition of the British medical journal The Lancet, Reynolds proclaimed that cannabis is “one of the most valuable medicines we possess.” Another widely hailed physician at the time, Sir William Osler, used CBD for migraines with excellent results.

The father of French psycho-pharmacology, Dr. Jean-Jacques Moreau de Tours, used the cannabis plant to treat depression, another condition still widely treated with cannabis in the modern era. Later, during the Revolutionary War, soldiers were paid with cannabis, and presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson encouraged farmers to grow more hemp to produce more rope and paper, as well as clothing and ship sails (which dates back to the Egyptians using hemp sails on their Nile boats 3,000-4,000 years ago). During WWII, American farmers were also asked to grow as much hemp as possible. Last time I checked, the US government isn’t politely asking farmers to grow hemp anymore, although corn and grain subsidies are booming.

Anything that can be made of plastic can also be made from hemp, which can reduce exposure to phytoestrogens and other chemicals in plastic and other synthetic compounds. Hemp plant fibers are long and tough, and can be woven into a soft cloth that wears well and has fewer of the herbicides and pesticides associated with other modern cloths like cotton. Even copies of the Declaration of Independence used to be written on cannabis paper, since it doesn’t yellow with age like other papers do.

As you’ve probably already heard, the hemp plant itself is is a highly useful plant, and every part of it has been used to make a wide variety of products, including biofuel and medicine. Biofuel made from hemp seeds is far less expensive and more effective than ethanol derived from corn. If there weren’t so many federal restrictions, growing hemp would highly benefit any agricultural state, but unfortunately most states must pay an absurdly high premium to import hemp seeds. And of course, as you’re probably aware, both THC and CBD seem to be immersed in a constant struggle of medical legality that I simply don’t have the time to address in this post.

Nonetheless, when it comes to CBD oil and cannabidiol, people seem be getting more aware of the fact that you don’t need to be a pothead to get all the medical, relaxing, hormone and metabolism-balancing properties of weed. Not that the image below is based on hard scientific epidemiological data, but a quick glance at a Google trends profile of searches for “CBD Oil” speaks volumes, doesn’t it?

Is CBD Addictive, Unsafe or Illegal?

So if CBD oil is so freaking magical, there must be a downside right? Addictive potential, perhaps? Toxicity and lack of proven safety? Illegal? Although I touched on the absence of C1 and C2 receptor binding earlier in this article, let’s delve into the addictive or unsafe potential of CBD just a bit more.

First, there is zero evidence, anywhere that CBD is addictive. This is because CBD does not act on any receptors in the brain that would produce addiction. You already learned about the science behind that whole receptor thing.

There, that was easy, huh?

But if you want more details then click here to read some of the writings of Dr. Tod Mikuriya, former national administrator of the US government’s marijuana research programs, was quite outspoken on the subject of addiction. The late Dr. Mikuriya stated that no other single drug or substance has as many therapeutic benefits as cannabis, and he never discovered any evidence of cannabis addiction.

Now don’t get me wrong – some will indeed claim that cannabis is addictive. For example, the Boggs Act of 1951 established mandatory sentences for drug users and also claimed that cannabis was addictive. But since then, testimony given by Dr. Harris Isbell, Director of Research at the Public Health Service hospital in Lexington, Kentucky exposed this as false, explaining how cannabidiols from marijuana are not physically addictive.

But Dr. Isbell’s research was mostly ignored, and instead overshadowed by the argument that the plant  inevitably is the stepping stone to heroin addiction, and the calling for harsh penalties against offenders of the marijuana laws. But the concept of marijuana as a “gateway drug” remains completely unproven.

In over 6,000 years of usage in Oriental Medicine, there have been no cases of addiction reported (although Emperor Fu Hsi referred to cannabis as a popular remedy as early as 2,900 BC).

In the early 1900s, as part of the Prohibition movement, cannabis was claimed by many to be addictive. But this was not based on research, and ironically the recommended treatment for cannabis “addiction” in most cases was the use of heroin.

An actual long term study, Ganja in Jamaica: A Medical Anthropological Study of Chronic Marijuana Use, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1975, showed zero concerns with addiction, even after patients who had used cannabis for decades had stopped. The 1980 study Cannabis in Costa Rica: A Study in Chronic Marijuana Use backed this up. Most interestingly, studies like this are not finding any addictive potential even in the presence of THC along with the CBD!

In the early 1990’s, rehabilitation facilities did indeed experience a significant surge of patients who were “addicted” to cannabis. But a survey done at that time noted that nearly all of them had come from the court system, where judges gave convicted criminals the choice between entering into treatment for addiction or entering prison, which was probably a pretty simple choice for most.

Later in the 1990’s, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) funded research that had the goal of proving that cannabis is addictive. But instead of identifying any biochemical pathway that could cause addiction, any research defined addiction by the presence or absence of some degree of withdrawal, with no specific parameters for withdrawal actually defined. In other words, if you’re thirsty, this NIDA-funded research could argue that this means you are addicted to water.

As a matter of fact, here’s what this article reported about NIDA.

The ugly truth is that the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the agency that oversees 85 percent of the world’s research on controlled substances, is on record stating that its institutional policy is to reject any and all medical marijuana research. “As the National Institute on Drug Abuse, our focus is primarily on the negative consequences of marijuana use,” a NIDA spokesperson told The New York Times in 2010. “We generally do not fund research focused on the potential beneficial medical effects of marijuana.”

Bummer.

And how about the safety of cannabis?

Dr. Lester Grinspoon, Professor Emeritus at Harvard Medical School, spent the majority of his professional life studying cannabis, from the 1960’s to 2000’s. The result was “Marijuana: The Forbidden Medicine“. As you can see, Dr. Grinspoon didn’t find one single case of death, stating that

“There are no deaths from cannabis use. Anywhere. You can’t find one.”

There are dozens of other doctors and similar studies, too many to list here – but you can certainly delve in at ProjectCBD website. On September 6, 1988 Francis Young, an administrative DEA judge, took medical testimony for over two weeks, and at the end of it, he said,

“Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.”

Once again, even when talking about the THC combined with the CBD, and not the isolated, non-psychoactive CBD component, marijuana is shown to be both non-addictive and safe.

But when it comes to pain management, one of the primary uses for CBD oil, deaths from drug overdoses and drug poisoning continue to rise. Deaths from opioid analgesics – one of the most universally prescribed pain management drugs – increased from 4,030 in 1999 to 15,597 in 2009 and 16,651 in 2010. In 2010, 60 percent of all drug overdose deaths (22,134) involved pharmaceutical drugs, and pioid analgesics showed up in about 3 of every 4 of those pharmaceutical overdose deaths. That confirms the predominant role that research has shown opioid analgesics to play in drug-related mortality. Opioids are nasty, brutal drugs with side effects nearly as bad as the conditions they’re taken for, and although deaths from opiods are common, they’re still one of the most turned to bandaids in modern medicine.

CBD in proper dosages gives nearly the same pain reduction compared to opioid prescription drugs such as morphine, hydrocodone, and oxycodone are examples, and when combined with these drugs, allows you to use far less of the actual prescription, thus reducing the toxic load on your liver and kidneys. And of course, as you already know, these benefits come without the proven addictive or unsafe nature of opioid drugs.

Considering the complete non-addictiveness and safety of cannabis, Dr. James Hudson, PhD, Professor Emeritus, University of British Columbia Department of Pathology and Lab Medicine, has said that pharmaceutical companies have an enormous incentive to chemically recreate the natural compounds in marijuana and somehow sell a drug from it. You probably already know this, but pharmaceutical companies can’t patent a natural compounds, but if they can make a synthetic compounds that mimics ingredient from cannabis, they can formulate that as a drug and potentially make a lot more money off of it.

To get an idea of the medical benefits of CBD (again, I need to emphasize to you that this is not medical marijuana or anything illegal, just the completely natural form of CBD), just take a look video of CBD oil helping with a form of childhood epilepsy called Dravet syndrome. The first use of CBD for Dravet’s syndrome was given to a patient who was having 300 seizures a week. I first talked about this video last year Is Weed Healthy? The Controversial Truth About The Science Of Marijuana…

Do you see that? The form of epilepsy in that video usually kills the child.

Here’s a nearly identical video of a patient with multiple sclerosis (MS) who was given CBD…

…and cerebral palsy. When you watch the video below, it becomes even more ironic that the government once created a prohibition of cannabis, declaring that it “has no medical usage”.

You get the idea, and now you probably also have a pretty good idea of why pharmaceutical companies would want to patent some chemical-ized version of this. So I’d suspect that we’re not too far away from an enormously overpriced cannabis-like chemical produced in a pharmaceutical factory. But in the meantime, you can get the identical effects from entirely natural sources of CBD. Let’s take a look at what some of those most relevant effects would be.

As for the legality, here’s the skinny for my home country of the USA (original source here):

“The drug Schedules list “Tetrahydrocannabinols” and “marijuana” both as Schedule I drugs under the Controlled Substances Act, however cannabidiol is unlikely to be considered as a Schedule I drug on the basis of being covered by the listing of “Marijuana” or by the listing of “Tetrahydrocannabinols” under Schedule I of the CSA.

“Marijuana” has a DEA Drug Code of 7360 (distinct from cannabidiol’s Drug Code of 7372) and is defined by the CSA as “all parts of the plant Cannabis sativa L., whether growing or not; the seeds thereof; the resin extracted from any part of such plant; and every compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture, or preparation of such plant, its seeds or resin.” Exempted from regulation under the definition are “the mature stalks of such plant, fiber produced from such stalks, oil or cake made from the seeds of such plant, any other compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture, or preparation of such mature stalks (except the resin extracted therefrom), fiber, oil, or cake, or the sterilized seed of such plant which is incapable of germination.”

A DEA Interpretive Rule published in 2001 states that the “definition of marijuana was intended to include those parts of marijuana which contain THC and to exclude those parts which do not. … The legislative history is absolutely clear that Congress meant to outlaw all plants popularly known as marijuana to the extent those plants possessed THC.”Cannabidiol isolated by extraction from marijuana sources does not contain THC, and synthetically produced cannabidiol does not contain THC either. It therefore stands to reason that cannabidiol is not covered under the prohibition on marijuana.

“Tetrahydrocannabinols” listed under Schedule I of the CSA are unlikely to include cannabidiol. Tetrahydrocannabinols are defined as follows:

Unless specifically excepted or unless listed in another schedule, any material, compound, mixture, or preparation, which contains any quantity of the following hallucinogenic substances, or which contains any of its salts, isomers, and salts of isomers whenever the existence of such salts, isomers, and salts of isomers is possible within the specific chemical designation (for purposes of this paragraph only, the term “isomer” includes the optical, position and geometric isomers):

(31) Tetrahydrocannabinols (DEA Drug Code: 7370)

Meaning tetrahydrocannabinols naturally contained in a plant of the genus Cannabis (cannabis plant), as well as synthetic equivalents of the substances contained in the cannabis plant, or in the resinous extractives of such plant, and/or synthetic substances, derivatives, and their isomers with similar chemical structure and pharmacological activity to those substances contained in the plant, such as the following:

1. 1 cis or trans tetrahydrocannabinol, and their optical isomers

2. 6 cis or trans tetrahydrocannabinol, and their optical isomers

3. 3,4 cis or trans tetrahydrocannabinol, and its optical isomers

(Since nomenclature of these substances is not internationally standardized, compounds of these structures, regardless of numerical designation of atomic positions covered.)

Furthermore, cannabidiol was not placed into Schedule I when The Controlled Substances Act was amended in July 2012 with the US Congress‘ passing of the Synthetic Drug Abuse Prevention Act of 2012 (SDAPA) (which came into effect on January 4, 2013) to ban various cannabinoids, cathinones, and phenethylamines. The part adding to Schedule I various “cannabimimetic agents” which include molecules more closely resembling so-called “classically” structured cannabinoids reads as follows: Since cannabidiol is chemically not a tetrahydrocannabinol (nor indeed a “cannabinol” of any kind) and cannabidiol has a DEA Drug Code of 7372 (distinct from Tetrahydrocannabinols’ designated Drug Code of 7370), it stands to reason that cannabidiol is not considered one of the drugs placed into Schedule I under the listing of “Tetrahydrocannabinols” in the CSA.

(d)(1) Unless specifically exempted or unless listed in another schedule, any material, compound, mixture, or preparation which contains any quantity of cannabimimetic agents, or which contains their salts, isomers, and salts of isomers whenever the existence of such salts, isomers, and salts of isomers is possible within the specific chemical designation.

(2) In paragraph (1):

(A) The term “cannabimimetic agents” means any substance that is a cannabinoid receptor type 1 (CB1 receptor) agonist as demonstrated by binding studies and functional assays within any of the following structural classes:

(i) 2-(3-hydroxycyclohexyl)phenol with substitution at the 5-position of the phenolic ring by alkyl or alkenyl, whether or not substituted on the cyclohexyl ring to any extent.

Cannabidiol, while being a more “classically structured” cannabinoid (not like the much more recently discovered cannabinoid receport agonists with indole rings such as many of the JWH- and AM- named series), was not on the list of specifically newly banned cannabinoids (even among those with a more so-called “classic structure”) and it does not fall into the category of unlisted cannabinoids which are caught by the definition above for several reasons. Primarily, CBD is not a CB1 agonist; it is a CB1 antagonist. Also, unlike CP 47,497‘s homologues and similar synthetic “classical structured cannabinoids” which the above definition was written carefully to include, the cannabidiol molecule has a cyclohexene ring where the amended law requires a cyclohexane ring, and further cannabidiol does not have the required 3-hydroxyl moiety bonded to its cyclohexenyl functional group where the law requires a hydroxyl moiety bonded to the 3- position of a cyclohexyl functional group.”

OK, yes I’ll admit. That part hurts my head. But in a nutshell it simply means that cannabidiol, aka CBD, is a far different chemical than cannabinol or THC, and because of that, can’t fall into the class of being a controlled drug .

Of course, it’s extremely important to draw a distinction between cannabidiol from medical marijuana vs. cannabidiol from industrial hemp. The first form of cannabidiol is extracted from medical marijuana plants grown to be high in CBD and low in THC. It’s often sold under the title “Charlotte’s Web” and is a Schedule I controlled substance. It is only sold to licensed dispensaries and prescribed by doctors for particular conditions in places where marijuana is regulated, such as the USA. Marijuana-based CBD oil like this is only legal in states such as Colorado and Washington that have enacted medical marijuana laws.

While medical marijuana is grown to be high in CBD for the treatment of specific ailments, the THC content can vary dramatically, sometimes getting as high as the CBD content. The other problem with medical marijuana (besides the possibility of getting a strain that is high in THC) is that it’s not currently legal everywhere. In the United States, you must be living in certain states and obtain a prescription from a doctor to receive medical marijuana.

The water soluble CBD I use called “BioCBD” contains less than 0.001% THC, which is far below the legal threshold of 0.3% set by the DEA. Because of this unusually low amount of THC, this also means that a CBD source like BioCBD will not cause a positive drug test.

Since regulations can vary for each country, I’d recommend that if you want bulletproof confidence that you are completely within the bounds of legality, you reach out to your specific country’s customs department. Ask if you can import dietary supplements from the USA. If you are allowed to do this, then you can probably order CBD from hemp-based products.

Now…how about if you’re an athlete concerned about CBD use being considered “doping”?

No search of CBD Oil or Cannabidiol turns up any results on the World Anti Doping Association’s (WADA) prohibited substances list, and the article “Why should Cannabis be Considered Doping in Sports?” explains why:

“The WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency, 2013) establishes a 15 ng/mL urinary 11-nor-9-carboxy-THC (THCCOOH) threshold; urine analyses involves THCCOOH-glucuronide conjugates cleavage, which significantly increases free THCCOOH concentrations and detection time. Urinary THCCOOH concentrations above the 15 ng/mL threshold are considered Adverse Analytical Findings and may be interpreted as a violation of anti-doping rules (World Anti-Doping Agency, 2009). Studies showed that even occasional and single cannabis smoking might yield a THCCOOH positive result (≥15 ng/mL) for up to 5 days (Huestis et al., 1996). Thus, consuming cannabis even weeks before a match may imply a considerable risk of being detected in a doping test. In light of this considerable risk, some users started using a new preparation of herbal smoking blends named “Spice.” Such substances are highly potent cannabinoid analogs, with unknown and potentially harmful toxicological properties that may cause prolonged intoxication. These substances mimic or worsen cannabis’ toxic effects provoking cognitive and motor impairment (UNODC, 2011).

The non-psychoactive cannabidiol (CBD) is anxiolytic in humans following a single dose (Zuardi et al., 1993; Bergamaschi et al., 2011); decreased anxiety and fear memories extinction after oral CBD intake may enhance sports performance with no “violation” of the Code, as no THCCOOH is detected in urine. One way to protect athletes’ health and to promote health, fairness, and equality in sports is to include any illicit drugs, their constituents and analogs in the anti-doping program. The sports may assist to create educational program for youth and athletes as an alternative to keep them away from drugs and to preserve the intrinsic value about the “spirit of sport.””

The US Anti Doping Association (USADA), is a bit more cautionary, and in the following statement sums up the fact that you should probably make sure you get any CBD you use from a “clean” source:

“Athletes need to be aware that while some papers show that the likelihood of testing positive from a hemp product (at least in workplace testing) is very low (1), there are at least two peer-reviewed articles that show it is possible to sometimes detect THC in the urine of people who have consumed hemp products (2,3). Athletes who choose to consume hemp products may be at risk for a positive anti-doping test, even though many of these products claim not to contain THC. Thus, the risk of testing positive from hemp is low, but nonetheless it may be possible. Because athletes are strictly liable for what is in their systems, irrespective of how it got there, it is very important to be aware of this possibility.”

And then there’s the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). To confirm a positive test for marijuana in NCAA testing, the level of THC in your urine would have to exceed 15 nanograms per milliliter. This is impossible to attain with a CBD oil derived from a hemp plant, and the only forms of cannabis that appear on the NCAA banned drugs list are marijuana, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and synthetic cannabinoids such as spice, K2, JWH-018, and JWH-073.

Finally, if you want to be 100% informed on legality of CBD or any other substance both in and out of competition, you simply cannot beat the Global Drug Reference Online (GlobalDRO) search engine, which allows you to search for any substance, in any sport, in any country, from any nation of purchase.

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The Effects Of CBD On Hormones

Anyways, now we’re about to get to the good stuff, specifically things that I figured health-minded readers like you would actually find helpful, such as hormone balancing, de-stressing, enhanced sleep, fat loss, etc. But if you want to simply stop reading now, and take a side-track to go peruse the more than 20,000 articles published in peer reviewed journals that show the medical efficacy of CBD for a variety of other conditions in addition to what I’ve listed here, then knock yourself out.

Let’s begin with your endocrine system and hormones. Here are the studies:

1. Endocannabinoid system participates in neuroendocrine control of homeostasis (PubMed)

2. The emerging role of the endocannabinoid system in endocrine regulation and energy balance(PubMed)

3. Endocannabinoids in endocrine and related tumours (PubMed)

4. Role of the endocannabinoid system in food intake, energy homeostasis and regulation of the endocrine pancreas (PubMed)

5. The role of the endocannabinoid system in the neuroendocrine regulation of energy balance (PubMed)

6. Effect of cannabidiol on plasma prolactin, growth hormone and cortisol in human volunteers (PubMed)

Your endocrine system consists of glands throughout your body which regulate everything from energy levels to metabolism to sex drive. One major function of this system is to produce excitation in response to stress, which is of course necessary for survival, but when it gets out of hand it can be a source of excess stress. One big effect of cannabidiol in the endocrine system seems to be to protect against excess stress by reducing susceptibility to stress-induced activation in the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis. CBD significantly decreases plasma cortisol levels, and this is actually why I started using CBD in the first place – to reduce my cortisol.

But CBD has other effects on your endocrine system, particularly your appetite. You may simply think that marijuana produces the munchies and therefore makes you fat, and although this makes logical sense, science has shown that it’s not the case that marijuana makes you fat, especially when CBD is present.

Here’s how it works…

Your pancreas secretes the hormones glucagon and insulin to regulate blood sugar by signaling your liver to break down fat into sugar (glucagon) or to store sugar as fat (insulin). These hormones work as a pair to maintain homeostasis, and they stimulate the release of each other through a complex feedback mechanism. While THC primarily increases glucagon and blood sugar, CBD lowers insulin levels, and it is this CBD action that helps to explain why marijuana users tend to eat more calories but do not gain any extra weight, have less obesity and have lower rates of type II diabetes than non-users, and is also why some diabetics find that marijuana makes it easier to manage their blood sugar.

Type II diabetics (whose pancreas still functions) tend to have very high levels of insulin, but the liver is unable to use that insulin, so blood sugar stays high, and the pancreas eventually damages itself by trying to continually produce more and more insulin, eventually leading to organ failure if the diabetes is unmanaged. By lowering pancreatic insulin release, CBD may alleviate or prevent the progression of type II diabetes and blood sugar disorders. Cannabinoid antagonists such as CBD have been shown to reduce obesity, and not only do rodents given these antagonists eat less, but they also lose more weight than their reduced feeding can account for.

So the summary of the biggest effects of CBD on the endocrine system? Lower cortisol and better blood sugar control. Let’s move on.

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The Effects Of CBD On Anxiety & Stress

You’ve already seen the data on the big cortisol-lowering effects of CBD. But when it comes to anxiety and paranoia in general, a THC-rich strain of marijuana will actually increase not decrease stress unless there is enough CBD present to balance out the stress-increasing effect of weed.

Studies in humans, including many of those cited below, have demonstrated that CBD dosage reduces anxiety (once again, compared to the increased levels of anxiety that THC produces), and that when you combine CBD with THC, it takes the anxiety edge off THC. This is due to the action of CBD on 5HT1A and TRPV1 receptors, both of which are involved in mitigating the anxiolytic, panic and fear responses to stress.

Here are the studies that have specifically investigated CBD’s role as an anti-anxiolytic:

1. Cannabidiol, a Cannabis sativa constituent, as an anxiolytic drug (PubMed)

2. Antidepressant-Like and Anxiolytic-Like Effects of Cannabidiol: A Chemical Compound of Cannabis Sativa (PubMed)

3. Cannabidiol reduces the anxiety induced by simulated public speaking in treatment-naïve social phobia patients (PubMed)

4. Neural basis of anxiolytic effects of cannabidiol (CBD) in generalized social anxiety disorder(PubMed)

5. Central anandamide deficiency predicts stress-induced anxiety: behavioral reversal through endocannabinoid augmentation (PubMed)

6. Effects of cannabidiol (CBD) on regional cerebral blood flow (PubMed)

7. The anxiolytic-like effects of cannabidiol injected into the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis are mediated by 5-HT1A receptors (PubMed)

8. The anxiolytic effect of cannabidiol on chronically stressed mice depends on hippocampal neurogenesis: involvement of the endocannabinoid system (PubMed)

9. Plant-based medicines for anxiety disorders, part 2: A review of clinical studies with supporting preclinical evidence (PubMed)

When it comes to stress, which is of course significantly related to anxiety, the host of studies are just as impressive:

1. Endogenous cannabinoid signaling is essential for stress adaptation (PubMed)

2. Regulation of endocannabinoid signaling by stress: Implications for stress-related affective disorders (PubMed)

3. Functional interactions between stress and the endocannabinoid system: from synaptic signaling to behavioral output (PubMed)

4. Neuromodulators, stress and plasticity: a role for endocannabinoid signalling (PubMed)

5. Downregulation of endocannabinoid signaling in the hippocampus following chronic unpredictable stress (PubMed)

6. Endocannabinoids and stress (PubMed)

7. Stress regulates endocannabinoid-CB1 receptor signaling (PubMed)

8. Chronic Stress Impairs α1-Adrenoceptor-Induced Endocannabinoid-Dependent Synaptic Plasticity in the Dorsal Raphe Nucleus (Pub Med)

9. Endocannabinoid-mediated modulation of stress responses: Physiological and pathophysiological significance (PubMed)

10. Cannabinoid receptor activation prevents the effects of chronic mild stress on emotional learning and LTP in a rat model of depression (PubMed)

11. Cannabinoids ameliorate impairments induced by chronic stress to synaptic plasticity and short-term memory (PubMed)

12. The anxiolytic effect of cannabidiol on chronically stressed mice depends on hippocampal neurogenesis: involvement of the endocannabinoid system (PubMed)

13. Low-frequency stimulation evokes serotonin release in the nucleus accumbens and induces long-term depression via production of endocannabinoid (PubMed)

This is just a small sample of the research showing the role that CBD plays in reducing stress and reducing anxiety. I’ve found that as little as 10mg CBD vastly lowers my anxiety at the end of the day, and have dosed with as high as 100mg CBD to be as calm as a baby during trans-Atlantic plane flights, nights sleeping in hotel rooms, and other situations where I have difficulty sleeping or tend to be stressed out. The stuff works like a charm, and saves me from having to hunt down an unhealthy, addictive alternative like valium or diazepam.

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The Effects Of CBD On Inflammation

You can pretty much consider inflammation to be the freaking bane of our modern, fast-paced, industrialized lifestyles. Of the ten leading causes of mortality in the United States, chronic, low-level inflammation contributes to the pathogenesis of at least seven, specifically heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, and nephritis.

But from joint pain to irritable bowel syndrome to diabetic retinopathy, CBD has been shown to modulate both acute and chronic inflammatory issues via several different mechanisms, and from the research I’ve seen and cited below, it’s even more powerful than many of the commonly recommend natural remedies for inflammation, such as curcumin, fish oil, resveratrol, anti-oxidants, protelytic enzymes, Vitamin C, etc.

For example, cytokines are the signaling proteins synthesized and secreted by immune cells upon stimulation. They are the modulating factors that balance initiation and resolution of inflammation. One of the mechanisms of immune control by CBD during inflammation is stopping cytokine production by immune cells and lowering cytokine production by the T-helper cells Th1 and Th2 (which are interestingly the same cells in which overactivity can contribute to autoimmune issues and food intolerances). The inflammatory compound interleukin-6 (IL-6) can also be decreased in the presence of CBD.

In one interesting study, researchers decided to test the effect of CBD on four cell signaling or mediating molecules associated with intestinal inflammation and oxidative damage to the gut. Their findings were as follows:

1. Inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) – CBD reduced the overexpression of iNOS in response to colitis. iNOS overexpression is well correlated with disease activity with colitis, and inhibitors of iNOS lead to improvement in experimental models of IBD. iNOS results in high-output production of NO, which results in oxidative damage to the intestine via reactive oxygen species (ROS).

2. Interleukin-1β – levels significantly increased with experimental colitis. CBD was shown to decrease levels. IL-1β is shown to have potent pro-inflammatory activity and thus heightens the inflammatory response that leads to intestinal injury. IL-1β amplifies the production of inflammatory leukocytes (immune system cells), resulting in an increase of inflammation.

3. Interleukin-10 – levels significantly decreased with experimental colitis. CBD was shown to restore levels. IL-10 has anti-inflammatory activity by inhibiting the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines. Restoration of IL-10 activity is critical to intestinal health.

The reduction of iNOS and reactive oxygen species by CBD, along with the reduction of lipid peroxidation, shows the important therapeutic action of CBD in reduction of colonic inflammation by indirect reduction of oxidative damage. In addition, the dysregulation of the interleukins IL-1B and IL-10 is a well-known disruption caused by irritable bowel disease (IBD). The restoration of these interleukins to normal behavior by CBD, although the specific pathway is unknown, is another important therapeutic action that CBD has on reduction of colonic inflammation.

Many of the folks I coach and do consults with have always struggled with a “sensitive gut”, irritable bowel syndrome, bloating, gas, constipation and other signs of gut inflammation, and being able to use CBD to reduce gut inflammation could be a game-changer for these people. But from the joints to neural tissue, CBD has a variety of other natural anti-inflammatory effects. Here are just a smattering of the studies done on cannabidiols and inflammation.

1. Cannabidiol as an emergent therapeutic strategy for lessening the impact of inflammation on oxidative stress (PubMed)

2. The endocannabinoid system: an emerging key player in inflammation (PubMed)

3. Anti-inflammatory role of cannabidiol and O-1602 in cerulein-induced acute pancreatitis in mice (PubMed)

4. Cannabinoids, endocannabinoids, and related analogs in inflammation (PubMed)

5. Cannabidiol, a non-psychotropic plant-derived cannabinoid, decreases inflammation in a murine model of acute lung injury: role for the adenosine A(2A) receptor (PubMed)

6. Cannabinoids suppress inflammatory and neuropathic pain by targeting α3 glycine receptors(PubMed)

7. Cannabidiol reduces intestinal inflammation through the control of neuroimmune axis (PubMed)

8. Diabetic retinopathy: Role of inflammation and potential therapies for anti-inflammation (PubMed)

9. Cannabidiol reduces Aβ-induced neuroinflammation and promotes hippocampal neurogenesis through PPARγ involvement   (PubMed)

10. Cannabidiol attenuates high glucose-induced endothelial cell inflammatory response and barrier disruption (PubMed)

11. Vanilloid TRPV1 receptor mediates the antihyperalgesic effect of the nonpsychoactive cannabinoid, cannabidiol, in a rat model of acute inflammation (PubMed)

12. Cannabidiol attenuates cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity by decreasing oxidative/nitrosative stress, inflammation, and cell death (PubMed)

13. Cannabinoids in clinical practice (PubMed)

Interestingly, the connection between CBD and inflammation can be highlighted using professional sports as an example. From MMA fighters to NBA basketball players, cannabis use is widespread among hard charging professional and a growing number of recreational athletes, specifically for shutting down the extreme amounts of joint inflammation and pain from constantly pounding the mat or the court and for helping the body relax and sleep at night after a day of stress combined with hard and heavy training. Many NFL athletes are now experimenting with cannabis extracts to manage post-head injury symptoms and to reduce the chronic mid and post-career aches and pains.

I’m sure that if these same athletes realized they could get all the same anti-inflammatory, anti-anxiety and sleep effects from CBD, without having to worry about THC testing by their athlete’s federation, they’d likely leap at the chance.

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The Effects Of CBD On Metabolism & Body Fat

Bet you never thought you’d hear somebody recommending a weed derivative to lose weight, but it’s true. Earlier in this article, you learned how CBD can help to stabilize insulin levels, regulate appetite, and decrease cortisol – all of which can have a profound effect on your body fat levels.

1. The impact of marijuana use on glucose, insulin, and insulin resistance among US adults (American Journal of Medicine)

2. The potential use of cannabidiol in the therapy of metabolic syndrome (PubMed)

3. Cannabinoids and endocannabinoids in metabolic disorders with focus on diabetes (PubMed)

4. Cannabinol and cannabidiol exert opposing effects on rat feeding patterns (PubMed)

5. Cannabis and Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) for weight loss? (PubMed)

6. The endocannabinoid system in obesity and type 2 diabetes (PubMed)

7. Role of the endocannabinoid system in abdominal obesity and the implications for cardiovascular risk (PubMed)

8. Cannabinoids and endocannabinoids in metabolic disorders with focus on diabetes (PubMed)

As I mentioned earlier, cannabidiol is known to counteract some of the effects of THC like the “munchies.” Just as THC can significantly increase your appetite, CBD can suppress your appetite, which is ideal if you’re watching your figure. Here is a great two minute video that sums up how marijuana can help obesity and body fat:

In the video, you learn about one study in which researchers found that pot smokers had lower levels of obesity than people who do not smoke pot, and another study that found that a brain chemical with a structure similar to one of the active compounds found in cannabis might actually help people lose weight. The findings are just the latest addition to a growing body of evidence that marijuana may be useful in countering issues related to obesity.

The researchers leading many of the studies on marijuana extracts and obesity are affiliated with the UK’s GW Pharmaceuticals, which makes me cringe that pharmaceutical companies are going to make some kind of very expensive CBD-based weight loss drug.  But regardless of motive, in these studies, the researchers found that the two compounds, THCV and cannabidiol, boosted metabolism, and reduced levels of liver fat, and blood cholesterol. These same compounds also made mice more sensitive to insulin, protected the cells that produce insulin, and increasing metabolic rate – all while suppressing the appetite. Nice.

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The Effects Of CBD On Sleep

In the United States, approximately 70 million people suffer from insomnia, insufficient sleep or another sleep disorder. CBD extracts have been mistakenly described as sedating, but I haven’t found that to be the case with my own use and neither has research. Although it’s true that if you take a bunch of CBD (I’ve found 30g+ of a good, absorbable CBD will do it for me) you will fall asleep like a baby, in modest doses, CBD is mildly alerting, and simply provides a calm, relaxed focus.

Cannabidiol actually activates the same adenosine receptors as caffeine, which is technically a stimulant. But patients with sleep issues report that ingesting a CBD-rich tincture or extract a few hours before bedtime has a balancing effect that facilitates a good night’s sleep, and I’ve certainly found this to be the case.

Here are the studies on CBD and sleep.

1. The nonpsychoactive Cannabis constituent cannabidiol is a wake-inducing agent (PubMed)

2. Cannabis, pain, and sleep: Lessons from therapeutic clinical trials of Sativex, a cannabis-based medicine (PubMed)

3. Effects of acute systemic administration of cannabidiol on sleep-wake cycle in rats (PubMed)

4. Effect of Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol and cannabidiol on nocturnal sleep and early-morning behavior in young adults   (PubMed)

5. Cannabidiol, a constituent of Cannabis sativa, modulates sleep in rats (PubMed)

6. Endocannabinoid modulation of cortical up-states and NREM sleep (PubMed)

7. Intranodose ganglion injections of dronabinol attenuate serotonin-induced apnea in Sprague-Dawley rat (PubMed)

In sum: smaller doses of CBD provide you with a calm and relaxed focus that comes in handy during everything from writing to music to parties to workouts – very similar to what you would experience with THC, but without the psychoactive or paranoia properties. And if you combine these smaller doses of CBD with common natural sleep-inducing compounds like melatonin, magnesium, or lemon balm, then you can get yourself into an even more relaxed state. But larger doses of CBD (which are going to range based on the actual absorption of whichever CBD blend you are using) can be used all by themselves to enhance sleep or combat insomnia.

Speaking of dosage, in most clinical trials, you’ll see CBD dosing ranges from 10-800 mg of CBD a day (although to treat schizophrenia, I’ve seen doses as high as 1,300mg). But as with everything from whey protein to creatine to magnesium, everyone is different and you’ll likely need to experiment with a dosage range that works for you. The CBD capsules I personally use contain 10mg in one capsule, but based on the absorption (an important variable which you’re going to learn about next), I need to use far less CBD, about 1/10 the amount, compared to other CBD tinctures, extracts and capsules I’ve tried.

Why Most CBD Isn’t Absorbed & What You Can Do About It

OK, so there must be a catch here, because at this point you’re probably under the impression that I think CBD is some kind of cure-all magical tonic that ranks right up there with Belgium chocolate, Bordeaux wine and kale smoothies.

But problem is, CBD oil, capsules, powders, etc. are not easily absorbed by your body. They can spoil and become contaminated. They smell bad. They often taste bad too. And they’re not water soluble.

The water soluble thing is a biggie.

Your body is composed of over 60% water, and this means that you’re going to either A) need to take way, way more of a non water-soluble CBD product if you actually want to feel the effects or B) smoke or vape your CBD, which is logistically annoying and not something your kid or your pet can do (and yes, both kids and pets can enormously benefit from CBD usage).

This is why most CBD hemp oil products have an extremely poor bioavailability and most people simply don’t experience or feel any of the effects of the CBD they take.

So how can you make CBD absorbable?

Enter turmeric, the same flavorful spice that I mix with black pepper on my salads every single day of the year.

Turmeric comes from the rhizome in the turmeric plant, and the rhizome can grow up to 3 inches in length. The rhizome is then harvested and dried before being ground into a yellow powder, the very concentrated form of which is also known as curcumin (yes, the same curcumin that is currently the darling of the “natural anti-inflammatory” industry).

Kind of like cannabis, humans have been cultivating turmeric for a long time – over 4,000 years. The Ayurvedic medicinal herb was originally used as a medicinal herb in Southeast Asia, where turmeric also carries significant religious significance. Turmeric was a highly sought after commodity in the ancient spice trades that swept across China and Africa, all before the end of the 9th century.

India is the main cultivator of all the world’s turmeric crops and consumes 80% of the world’s supply. Due to the high content of the main bioactive component in turmeric (curcumin) Indian turmeric is considered to be the best in the world for medicinal purposes. The Indian city of Erode, located in the South Indian State of Tamil Nadu, is the trading hub for turmeric in the Eastern hemisphere. Erode is so well known for its turmeric production that it is referred to as “Yellow City,” and “Turmeric City” (similar to the way that my living room couch is covered in yellow stains from my frequent turmeric sprinkling on most of the dinners I eat).

And here’s why turmeric plays such an important role in CBD absorption…

…when the cannabionids and terpenoids in CBD are mixed with the the isolated curcuminoids of a high-curcumin containing turmeric plant, the bioavailability of the CBD absolutely explodes. This means that if you’ve used CBD oil before in the absence of a curcuminoid blend from turmeric, you probably only felt about 1/5 to 1/10 of the actual effects of the CBD, since CBD by itself is very poorly absorbed.

For you aspiring Bulletproof Coffee drinkers out there, this is a similar concept to the idea that you simply never get to feel several of the bioactive, wakefulness and focus-enhancing terpenoids in coffee until you have actually introduced fats and triglycerides into the coffee to help these terpenes cross your blood-brain barrier – hence the butter and coconut oil blended with the coffee.

Using an extraction process called “hybrid-nanoengineering”, which basically involves a combination of CBD with turmeric herbal extracts, it is actually possible to get a completely bioavailable and absorbable form of CBD. The way that hybrid-nanoengineering works is that the cannabinoids and terpenoids are extracted from the cannabis herbs and then blended in a lab with curcuminoids to create CBD particles that are on the nano paricle size level. Nano particles (1/100 the width of a human hair) are easier for your body to absorb and transport to where they are needed within your body. This means that a hyrbid-nanoeingeneered CBD is over 10x more bioavailable in the body than any other oil based CBD, CBD tincture or CBD capsule, and it means that just 10mg of a nano particle CBD is the equivalent of taking at least 100mg of oil based CBD.

The result of hybrid-nanoengineering with turmeric is a raw oil that is high in CBD, virtually free of THC (less than 0.001%,) and complete with a full spectrum of other cannabinoids and terpenes, which work synergistically to make CBD even more effective. The oil is then encapsulated, and…

…voila…

…you’ve got an extremely absorbable CBD capsule, along with all the benefits of curcumin. Here’s a video that demonstrates the absorption difference between water soluble CBD that’s been hybrid-nanoengineered, compared to regular, non-water soluble CBD.

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Summary

Whew. Congratulations, you made it.

You now know:

1. CBD is the non-psychoactive form of marijuana, and can actually combat unpleasant effects of smoking weed, such as paranoia or over-excitability…

2. CBD acts on completely different receptors and enzymes than THC, resulting in a significant effects on anxiety, depression and stress…

3. CBD is completely safe and non-addictive…

4. Pharmaceutical companies can’t patent CBD unless they turn it into synthetic chemical first…

5. There are shocking demonstrations of the potency of CBD for several serious neurological conditions such as epilepsy, MS and cerebral palsy…

6. CBD can also be used to balance hormones, reduce anxiety, lower inflammation and chronic pain, combat metabolic syndrome, and reduce obesity…

7. It is very difficult for your body to absorb CBD, unless the CBD has been blended with curcuminoids and made bioavailable in a nanoparticle size…

I would never endorse anything that I don’t use and benefit from myself, and I can honestly say that CBD is now one of my major go-to supplements, it allows me to get all the benefits of smoking weed without actually smoking weed.

In addition to my morning and evening multivitamin and fish oil, I’ve now added two CBD capsules (about 20mg absorbable CBD) to my early evening protocol, specifically to lower inflammation from exercise, to lower my stress and anxiety, to help me to have more creative focus for writing, and to cause me to fall asleep much, much faster at night. Since I travel frequently, I can – unlike weed – take CBD extracts through any airport, anywhere in the country, and also unlike weed, CBD is not banned by any governing bodies of sport like USADA, WADA or the NCAA.

Do you have more questions, comments or feedback about how to use CBD oil? About the nanoengineered formulas? Do you have other questions about THC, cannabis or marijuana? Leave your thoughts below and I promise to get you an answer!

The post How To Get All The Health Benefits Of Marijuana Without Smoking appeared first on Onnit Academy.

It doesn’t matter how fancy your compression socks are or how many body weight squats and calf raises you do in the back of the airplane. When you’re on that plane, you’re inside a tiny metal tube bombarded by solar radiation and completely disconnected from the planet Earth’s natural magnetic field.

This is compounded by WiFi signals bouncing around the cabin (which are often now available for the entire flight), people talking on their phones and checking e-mail inside that metal tube (which happens for the entire gate to takeoff and landing to gate phase), dehydration from altitude, extremely dry filtered air, toxin-laden airplane food, bad water, germs and airborne pathogens in tight spaces and – if you’re traveling across multiple time zones – a disruption of your natural circadian rhythms.

I don’t know about you, but when I’m traveling to races and have to perform at peak capabilities, often just hours after my flight touches down, I simply can’t afford the loss of fitness, the cellular oxidation, the dehydration and the total body damage that can potentially occur every time I hop on a flight to a race. So what can you do about it? Here are 11 ways peak performers can beat jet lag.

Total Human Optimization Rule #1: Grounding/Earthing

Grounding (also known as earthing) is exposing your body to the natural magnetic frequencies released by Earth.  At no time does grounding become a more effective destination strategy than when you’re traveling in an airplane, since hurdling through space 40,000 feet above the planet in a metal tube is about the most disconnected with the earth you can get.

The basic idea is that you aren’t able to discharge all the positive ions that build up via cellular metabolism, you aren’t able to absorb the negative ions you’d normally get if you were touching the ground, and this ion imbalance decreases the natural electrochemical gradient across your cell membranes, so you get disrupted cellular metabolism and inflammation.

So how do you actually earth or ground? As soon as I land in my destination I make it a point to either A) put on a pair of special shoes called “Pluggz” or sandals called “Earthrunners”, both of which have carbon plugs on them that allow for grounding without being barefoot or B) go outside in my bare feet (yes, I’m the guy in spandex or a speedo in the grassy lot behind the hotel doing barefoot yoga). I also use a device called an Earthpulse, which can be placed underneath the mattress to “ground” a bed.

Total Human Optimization Rule #2: Exercise

Multiple studies have shown that exercise can regulate circadian rhythms. So as lousy and miserable as you may feel training after a long day of travel or a long few days of international travel, the sooner you can vigorously move after arriving at your final destination, the sooner you can bounce back from jet lag and normalize your circadian rhythm and sleep.

But this doesn’t mean you have to do a killer WOD or epic run when you get to your destination. My top three choices if I’m feeling a bit blah after travel are: walking (barefoot if possible) in the sunshine or on a beach, swimming, (preferably in relatively cool water, as you’ll learn about later in this article), and as mentioned in point #1, outdoor barefoot yoga. Finally, for each hour that I’m sedentary on an airplane, I do 50 air squats near the back of the plane or in any other open space I can find.

Total Human Optimization Rule #3: Avoid Caffeine

It’s a relatively common recommendation to see the consumption of caffeine, alcohol and other stimulants discouraged for managing jet lag, and because of it’s overstimulation of central nervous system and potential for disrupting circadian rhythm even more, I absolutely agree.

Aside from the trace amounts of caffeine in the dark chocolate I occasionally consume while traveling, I simply do not go near caffeine or any other central nervous system stimulant while in route to my final destination. Since coffee and adrenal stimulants in high amounts can also inhibit testosterone and other anabolic hormones, this is a very good way to fight against fitness loss from frequent airplane travel.

Total Human Optimization Rule #4: Melatonin

Because overuse of melatonin makes is possible to shut down the body’s natural release of melatonin from the pineal gland, I do not use melatonin unless I’m traveling, in which case I take 1-3mg of a liquid melatonin or a melatonin patch 30-60 minutes prior to bed.

This shouldn’t be done while you’re on a plane, but can be useful for re-booting your circadian rhythm upon arriving at the final destination. Melatonin is also a natural anti-inflammatory, which will help decrease inflammation that you’ll build up during airline travel.

Total Human Optimization Rule #5: No-Jet-Lag Supplement

I discovered No-Jet-Lag at a Chinese herbal store in the Hong Kong airport when traveling home from a triathlon in Thailand, and upon inspecting the ingredients to verify there was nothing in it that would kill me, I tried it – following the instructions to take one tablet upon take-off, one every 2-4 hours while on the plane and then one final tablet upon landing.

And the stuff works wonderfully, both east-to-west and west-to-east. There are five homeopathic remedies listed as the active ingredients in No-Jet-Lag: Arnica Montana, Bellis Perennis, Chamomilla, Ipecacuanha and Lycopodium.

I’m no homepathic expert, but both my wife and I now use this stuff when we are traveling internationally, and have found it to be extremely effective in eliminating jet lag symptoms, especially when combined with the other strategies you’re learning about. Now that I’m here on the Onnit Academy, I’m going to give Alpha BRAIN®, or Total Human a try as a substitute for No-Jet-Lag, since it may work quite similarly.

Total Human Optimization Rule #6: Water

You’ve no doubt heard that you lose more water due to the dehydration that occurs flying in the dry air at altitude – so you obviously need to drink more water to stay hydrated and beat jet lag. But I’ve been going beyond the normal recommendations and experimenting with very high water intake – and finding that this helps out quite a bit compared to the standard disappointingly tiny cup of water handed to me by the airline stewardess every couple hours.

Instead, I’ve been drinking closer to 12-16 ounces of water each hour (nearly a full water bottle), and feeling a distinct difference in sleep, mood and energy upon landing. Just make sure to book an aisle seat, or if you’re seated in a window seat that your aisle-based airline partner is spry and willing to move every time you need to pee – or just politely ask to switch spots with them.

Total Human Optimization Rule #7: Cold Showers

Cold showers decrease inflammatory cytokines, assist with activation of brown adipose tissue for fat burning, and cause a rebound hormone response in the form of a release of adrenaline. I’ve been going so far as to actually go into the airline lounge in the airports for a 10-15 minute cold shower if I have a long layover. I also take a 2-5 minute cold shower in the hotel when I arrive at my final destination.

Splashing lots of cold water in your face is OK, but not quite as effective as cold water immersion or showering. Cold showers also have very good blood vessel expanding properties because they release more nitric oxide into your blood vessels, and the subsequent increase in glucose and oxygen uptake can dramatically help beat jet lag. For more on the benefits of cold, you can check out this article on T-Nation called “Cool Temps For A Hot Body”.

Total Human Optimization Rule #8: Curcumin

Curcumin – which is found in turmeric and curries – is a very powerful antioxidant which helps tremendously when taken on an empty stomach both before and after flying. Because of it’s ability to cross the blood-brain barrier and shut down inflammatory cytokines in neural tissue, is a potent brain anti-inflammatory and may also boost testosterone and growth hormone.

I’ve use about 1000mg of curcumin from a highly absorbable source. I recommend a brand of highly absorbable curcumin phytosome called “Rebound”. Incidentally, Onnit’s new T+ formula contains Bioperine, a black pepper extract which can actually enhance the effects of curcumin.

Total Human Optimization Rule #9: No Vegetable Oils

Yes, although it can be difficult while navigating through airports full of “healthy” stir fry and packaged crackers and health bars, you need to completely avoid vegetable oils if you want to avoid the inflammation that can occur during travel. Vegetable oils you should avoid include any roasted or heated seeds and nuts, stir fries, boxed foods and just about anything else with canola oil, soybean oil, corn oil, sunflower oil or safflower oil – as “healthy” as the food may be advertised to be.

While the 80/20 rule on vegetable oils may work much of the time, I follow the 100/0 rule with these foods when traveling – meaning they make up 0% of my diet. That usually means no airplane food for me, and instead, lots of raw seeds, nuts, chlorella, spirulina, fresh fruit, avocadoes, nori, and other healthy, real foods.

Total Human Optimization Rule #10: Sulfur

Sulfur-containing foods are very good antioxidant precursors, especially for the type of inflammation that can occur when you’re on an airplane. This include foods like broccoli, cauliflower, garlic, onions and Brussels sprouts. Supplements containing glutathione, N-Acetyl-Cystine, “MSM” or “DMSO” are also effective, but can have a nausea producing effect, so be careful with them – I don’t recommend more than a teaspoon.

Of course, if you opt for the pre-flight sautéed garlic and onions route, you may need to brush your teeth afterwards (if you plan on not creating enemies on the airplane. But if you squeeze in a few meals with these foods in the days leading up to the flight, you’ll feel much better when you land.

Total Human Optimization Rule #11: Oxytocin

Finally, oxytocin is an extremely powerful hormone that acts to lift your mood, but also acts as a potent antioxidant, antidepressant and anti-inflammatory. Although it’s most commonly known as a hormone that is released after sex in adults and during breastfeeding babies, you can actually get your oxytocin hormone fix anywhere and at any time – including when you’re traveling.

To do this, all you need to do is simply hug someone or (slightly less effective), warmly shake their hand. The simple act of bodily contact will cause your brain to release low levels of anti-inflammatory, mood-boosting oxytocin. So find the first person who’s OK with it when you get to your final destination and give them a big, loving bear hug. Or do some partner carries up the stairway in the hotel (incidentally, that’s a great travel workout). Just brush your teeth first if you did use the garlic trick you learned earlier.

Questions, comments or feedback on these 11 ways to maintain total human optimization when you travel? Leave your feedback below.

The post 11 Ways To Maintain Total Human Optimization When You Travel appeared first on Onnit Academy.